Commentary: When the season to be jolly turns melancholy

Deena Baxter is a mental health advocate, author and founder of The Surviving Suicide and Sudden Loss Project, a partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Collier County.(Photo11: Daily News file)

For those who have had a sudden loss of a loved one, navigating through the holiday season can be especially challenging.

When we lost our youngest adult son to suicide five years ago, I dreaded the holidays. After returning home from the memorial service in late October, I longed to banish Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve from the calendar. The idea of celebrating anything at all seemed disrespectful and inappropriate. Our hearts were shattered, the family tree was split in two, missing a vital limb, and it was unclear anything would survive.

Spiritual leader Hazrat Inayat Khan has written, “God breaks the heart again and again until it stays open.” When the heart breaks from sadness and loss, we have two choices. We can stay broken, closed and vulnerable or we can slowly stitch the pieces together again and open ourselves to the beauty — and inevitable pain — of living.

Likewise, when the family tree splits in two, we can cling to the brittle branches but they will break and take us down, just like our loved one; or we can embrace the living branches, nurture the tree and help ourselves and our family thrive again, in spite of the missing limb.

Earlier this year, I heard Elizabeth Smart talk about her story of abduction and brutality and adapted her wisdom. She found a way out of her story without it owning her.

Losing our son to suicide is part of my life but it isn’t all of me. I realized I can still grow and learn. There is always hope and a way forward. We can allow adversity to define us or we can choose to set our own course. It’s not easy. I know it’s not. I still have hard days, hard time. But it’s our choice to move forward, keep trying and not let our pasts define us that ultimately dictates who we are.

In finding my way out of my story without it owning me, I’ve accepted that I will always carry this loss with me. I’ve learned that broken hearts need protection, rest and self-care so they can regenerate and become resilient. And I can appreciate that each person needs to find their own path. We can’t do it for them.

If you or those you care about are struggling this holiday, you don’t have to go it alone. There are resources to help you and your family. The National Alliance on Mental Illness of Collier County (239-260-7300, email: info@namicollier.org) has an array of programs and services for children, teens and adults, all at no cost to you. Local chapters of The Compassionate Friends (612-812-0186, email: info@tcfswfl.org), S.A.S. - Surviving After Suicide (239-253-6600, email: CoachWithBob@aol.com), and Project Help Naples (239-649-1404, email: eileen@projecthelpnaples.org) also offer support and healing. There is also individual therapy with a licensed mental health professional.

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Resilience may be a simple matter of reframing the holiday by giving ourselves the priceless gift of healing. It’s not something we can buy. It’s a mindset we can embrace.

We can mend a piece of our broken heart by picking up one small shard and gluing it back in place, trusting that the journey will get a tiny bit easier if we just keep doing the next right thing, even when the instructions aren’t very clear and the road isn’t paved.

We can survive, we can thrive, we can live and we can love. That, in itself, is the miracle of the season.

Deena Baxter is a mental health advocate, author and founder of The Surviving Suicide and Sudden Loss Project, a partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Collier County. The project's mission is to promote life-affirming mental wellness. It includes a book, a creative arts website, www.WriteOnMyMind.com, and outreach presentations. The book is titled “Surviving Suicide - Searching for ‘Normal’ with Heartache and Humor.” All profit from book sales flows to NAMI of Collier County.

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